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50 die in Nigerian pipeline blaze

LAGOS: At least 50 Nigerian villagers burned to death on Wednesday when petrol gushing from a vandalised pipeline caught fire as they collected it in buckets and tins.

State television showed footage of scorched bodies strewn on the smouldering ground among containers which the victims had been using to scavenge the fuel.

The petrol caught light about 3 a.m. near a village called Umuichiechi-Umungbede in the southeast Nigerian state of Abia, the TV said.

More than 700 people died in a similar blaze in 1998 during a scramble for spilled petrol in the Niger Delta village of Jesse.

Although Nigeria is Africa's top crude oil producer it suffers chronic petrol shortages because of poorly maintained domestic refineries. Long lines of cars are common at petrol stations, leading to a thriving black market in petroleum products.

The authorities say it is increasingly common for local people to rupture a pipeline that passes through their area and collect the spilled fuel.

At Jesse in October 1998, about 2,000 people were killed or injured in the flames. It took almost a week to put out the fire.

It was not immediately clear what sparked Wednesday's inferno in Abia.

Fire crews rushed in from the nearby Abia state capital, Umuaihia, and the commercial city of Aba, but fire officials told the television they were unable to put out the blaze before it caused extensive damage.

Abia is not an oil-producing state but pipelines from nearby oil city of Port Harcourt pass through.-Reuters